❛ Will it be enough for you? To see me executed? ❜
❛ IT WOULD BE A START. ❜ my voice is almost unrecognizable now; a grating, low, horror of a sound mangled by grief & rage. those horrible yellow eyes that used to find me in my sleep aren’t so horrible to look upon now, shadowed by his pus-green skin. i almost feel sorry for him. almost. but i see rue, with the meadow flowers in her hair & then her family in district 11 staring back at me, a cruel reminder that she was never coming home. i see the gaunt, stony faces of the patients in district 8 & the smoke spiraling up towards the sky after it was flattened by capitol ships. then i see prim, her dark hair swirling around her face as her lips just began to form my name, before the parachutes swayed towards the ground & erupted into a storm of flame. my jaw goes stiff & my eyes dart to the handkerchief in his hand, its usual sterile white shade drenched entirely by blood. any ounce of pity i felt moments before fizzles out like a hot coal, replaced by the spitfire that got me into this mess in the first place.
❛ YOUR GRANDDAUGHTER MIGHT BE. ❜ a wound for a wound. something heavy falls to the pit of my stomach, a certain kind of guilt, maybe. prim’s face ought to be the very thing to stifle it, but it ignites my fury further. ❛ you’d be granted a mercy i wasn’t afforded. one that the families of all those tributes weren’t either. ❜ that thought alone makes the pleasure of it all flatten. i find myself suddenly supremely aware of what i must look like now: a bitter, frenzy-eyed creature suspended in the image of a child. the thing that he always saw inside me, the thing that started this rebellion. the stem of the rose feels so much heavier now. my arm stretches out towards him with the flower at its end: an offering; i wear a wolfish smile now, something cruelly & selfishly triumphant. ❛ — i hear it’ll be televised throughout what’s left of the districts. i expect you’ll want to look your best. after all, there will be so many old friends watching. ❜
THE BURIAL AT THEBES. @presinow.
